#DianneFeinstein, centrist stalwart of the Senate, dies at 90

A trailblazer for women in politics, she led the Intelligence Committee and helped mold the federal bench. Amid health setbacks, she faced calls to resign.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/09/29/dianne-feinstein-california-senator-dead/

Dianne Feinstein, centrist stalwart of the Senate, dies at 90

A trailblazer for women in politics, she led the Intelligence Committee and helped mold the federal bench. Amid health setbacks, she faced calls to resign.

The Washington Post
It was the morning of Nov 27, 1978, & #DianneFeinstein, a future powerhouse of the US #Senate, had decided she was done w/ #politics. After 9yrs on the #SanFrancisco Board of Supervisors, 2 failed bids for mayor & the recent death of her husband from colon cancer, she wanted out.

Hours later, gunshots rang out in City Hall. A fmr supervisor, #DanWhite, had fatally shot Mayor #GeorgeMoscone & Supervisor #HarveyMilk, one of the first openly #gay elected officials in the #UnitedStates.
#Feinstein rushed to #Milk & felt for a pulse. “My finger,” she later told the LATimes, “went into a bullet hole in his wrist.”

Then serving as board pres, #Feinstein, who died Sept28, had the duty of announcing the deaths. The image of her standing before television cameras amid the panic, solemnly promising that just as the city had recovered from the devastation of the 1906 earthquake, “so too can we rebuild from the spiritual damage” of the killings, propelled her to the national spotlight.
By the city’s succession laws, #Feinstein was elevated to mayor, an office she held for 9yrs before losing a bid for California governor in 1990. 2 yrs later, she won election to the #Senate, where she rose to become chairwoman of the #Intelligence Cmte & the top #Democrat on the #Judiciary Cmte. During >3 decades in office, she delivered muscular support as well as withering criticism of the #CIA, helped mold the #FederalBench, & championed an #AssaultWeaponsBan….

Excerpt from the above mentioned LATimes article:

“In the last seconds of his life, #GeorgeMoscone poured a drink for his killer & prepared to give him a pep talk. There’s life after politics, he began telling #DanWhite. You have a family to worry about. It will all work out.

“The mayor had no way of knowing that the man standing before him carried a loaded Smith & Wesson .38 under his suit coat.

#DianneFeinstein
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-11-21-vw-59151-story.html

Death & Politics : 15 years ago, the killings of George Moscone and Harvey Milk shocked San Francisco. But th

The killings took only a few seconds. Two bullets to the head apiece and five to the bodies.

Los Angeles Times

“He couldn’t have known that White had slipped into a basement window at City Hall to avoid metal detectors. Or that he had ducked into a side door of the mayor’s office so that two policemen outside didn’t even know that he had penetrated the inner office.

“All Moscone knew was that White had demanded a Monday morning meeting, mins before the mayor would announce Horanzy’s nomination. And it would have been out of character for Moscone to refuse.

#DianneFeinstein

“After offering the fmr supervisor a drink, he turned to sit on the couch in his back office. It was 10:50AM.

“White later said he heard a roaring, rushing sound in his head as Moscone talked. The mayor lit a cigarette. White began firing. 2 bullets ripped through Moscone’s chest &, when he fell to the floor, White leaned down & pumped 2 more into his head, execution style.

“Standing over the dead man, he reloaded his gun, then walked down a long marble corridor & asked to meet w/ #HarveyMilk.

“The 2 men entered an empty cubicle & 5 shots rang out. #Feinstein heard them, saw White race past her & smelled gunpowder. Then she found #HarveyMilk’s body, stomach-down on the floor.

“‘I intuitively knew that he was dead, you can tell,’ she recalls. ‘I tried to get a pulse & my finger went into a bullet hole in his wrist.’

“Pandemonium set in. W/a stunned crowd looking on, #Feinstein spoke the words she has never forgotten: ‘As president of the Board of Supervisors, it is my duty to inform you that Mayor Moscone & Supervisor Milk have been shot. And killed.’”

#DianneFeinstein #HarveyMilk #GeorgeMoscone

More from The WaPo:

#Feinstein won her #Senate seat in what became known as the #YearOfTheWoman, an election that sent 24 new women to the #House of Representatives & brought the total number of female senators to 6.

The precipitating event was the 1991 confirmation hearings of #SCOTUS nominee #ClarenceThomas, who became the second Black justice on the high court.

The proceedings pitted #AnitaHill, a fmr colleague of #ClarenceThomas’s who also was #Black, against an all-#male, all-#White Senate #Judiciary Cmte that, in the view of many #women, did not engage respectfully with Hill’s allegations that Thomas had #SexuallyHarassed her.

“Every woman that watched that changed,” #Feinstein told the New York Times in 2018. “I think change happened at that moment.”

#Feinstein sometimes spoke of the difficulties of being a #woman in #power, including the tendency of observers to remark on her appearance. Time magazine once described her as “a casting director’s idea of a Bryn Mawr president who must be bodily restrained from adding gloves — or perhaps even a pillbox hat — to her already ultra-conservative banker-blue suits & fitted red blazers & pearls.”
#Feinstein spent much of her career fielding criticism from opposite ends of the #political spectrum. She disappointed liberals w/her law-&-order approach toward #governance & her long-standing support for the #DeathPenalty, even as she frustrated conservatives w/her support for #GunControl & #SameSexMarriage rights. While some women celebrated Feinstein as a trailblazer, others resented what they considered her insufficient attention to women’s issues.
“I’ve lived a feminist life,” #Feinstein, who supported #AbortionRights, once told an interviewer. “I had to quit a job because there was no maternity leave. I raised a child as a #SingleMother. I put together legislation. I haven’t been a marcher, but I’ve lived it.”
Feinstein’s centrism dated to the earliest years of her #political career. Her elevation to the office of mayor came on the heels of upheaval, including the mass suicide at #Jonestown in Guyana — many followers of cult leader Jim Jones were from #SanFrancisco — & attacks by the New World Liberation Front terrorist group, which placed a bomb outside the bedroom window of Feinstein’s daughter. For a time, #Feinstein owned a handgun.

“The lesson Dianne took from this craziness was that she had been right — that all this #polarization & bitterness that was extant in the town had now led to these murders,” her biographer, Jerry Roberts, once told the New Yorker magazine, referring to the assassinations of #Moscone & #Milk. “That’s when she started talking about how the #center is so important.”

#DianneFeinstein

Of all the #legislation that crossed #Feinstein’s #Senate desk, the #bill w/which she was most associated was the #AssaultWeaponsBan that President Bill #Clinton signed into #law in 1994. The uphill effort showcased Feinstein at her most determined. When a more snr senator, Larry Craig (R-ID), questioned her experience on #gun issues, she reminded him that she had become mayor of #SanFrancisco as a result of a double assassination. “I know something about what #firearms can do,” she said.
The #AssaultWeaponsBan expired in 2004. After the mass killing at #SandyHook Elementary School in 2012, in which 20 first-graders & 6 adults were gunned down, #Feinstein spearheaded an unsuccessful effort to renew the #law.
#Biden, who recruited her to serve on the #Senate #Judiciary Cmte, called her “a pioneering American. …There’s no better example of her skillful legislating & sheer force of will than when she turned passion into purpose, & led the fight to ban assault weapons.”
Her #centrism — & her #influence — were vividly on display during her service on the #Senate #Intelligence Cmte, where in 2009 she became the first female chair. On many issues, she ranked among the most outspoken champions of the CIA & other intelligence organizations.…

Yet even as she championed the nation’s intelligence agencies, she subjected them to aggressive #oversight in a duality that aroused admiration as well as occasional perplexity among observers of her career.
Her support for the #intelligence community made especially explosive the investigation she led into the “#EnhancedInterrogation techniques” employed by the #CIA against #terrorism suspects after the #Sept11, 2001, attacks. #Obama ended the program shortly after succeeding George W. #Bush in the White House.

Deeply disturbed by testimony to the committee about secret CIA prisons known as “#BlackSites,” #Feinstein called for the investigation shortly after taking the chairmanship.

The cmte’s 6,700-pg “#torture report,” an executive summary of which was publicly released in 2014, alleged that #CIA #interrogation techniques — incl’g #waterboarding, #SleepDeprivation, physical #abuse, #confinement in a coffin-size box & #threats against suspects’ #families — had been far more #brutal, more #widespread & less effective than the agency previously claimed.

#DianneFeinstein

Then-CIA Dir John #Brennan insisted that the #interrogation techniques “did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, & save lives.” He & #Feinstein had earlier faced off in a high-stakes confrontation when Brennan accused cmte investigators of improperly obtaining materials from a #CIA computer network.
#Feinstein, whodenied #Brennan’s charges, gave a dramatic speech on the #Senate floor in which she accused the #CIA of improperly searching computers used by her staff members & seeking to #intimidate them w/ calls for a #DOJ review of their conduct. An internal CIA investigation later supported those claims, & #Brennan apologized.
In the 2014 midterm elections, #Republicans regained control of the #Senate, & #Feinstein lost her cmte chairmanship. “History will judge us by our commitment to a just society governed by #law,” she had said when the #torture report was released, “& the willingness to face an ugly truth & say ‘never again.’ ”
On the #Judiciary Cmte, which she joined during her 1st #Senate term, #Feinstein became known as an independent-minded vote.

During the #Bush admin, she opposed the noms of #SCOTUS justices #JohnRoberts & #SamuelAlito, several candidates for #FederalBench, & AG #AlbertoGonzales. But sided w/ #Republicans on noms incl’g… #MichaelMukasey —despite his refusal to describe #waterboarding as #torture —& fed appeals court judge #LeslieSouthwick, whose nom was opposed by #CivilRights & #GayRights grps.

“I have never believed that people elected me to represent this big state just to go and be a rubber stamp,” #Feinstein told the San Francisco Chronicle. However, she continued, “the president is owed some consideration to get his own team, provided that team is qualified.”

Feinstein encountered perhaps the most intense criticism of her career while serving as ranking #Democrat on the #Judiciary Cmte in 2018, during the firestorm surrounding #SCOTUS nominee Brett M. #Kavanaugh.

That summer #Feinstein had been forwarded a letter from Christine Blasey Ford, a California psychology professor, w/the allegation that #Kavanaugh had #SexuallyAssaulted her when they both were in high school. Feinstein, who argued that she was obligated to respect Ford’s request for #confidentiality, did not refer the matter to the #FBI until the existence of the letter was leaked to the news media, shortly before Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote was to take place.
Ford then came forward in a WaPo article & testified before the #Judiciary Cmte, as did #Kavanaugh, who furiously disputed her accusations before he was ultimately confirmed on an almost entirely party-line vote. #Conservatives charged that #Feinstein had made an 11th-hour attempt to “ambush” Kavanaugh. Feinstein remained unriled, as the Kavanaugh confirmation eclipsed perhaps even the Hill hearings in its drama.

Some liberals perceived #Feinstein as insufficiently tough during the confirmation proceedings of #AmyConeyBarrett, whose nomination by #Trump after the death of Justice #RuthBaderGinsburg gave #conservatives a 6-3 edge on the high court.

…Feinstein announced in late 2020 that she would step down as the top #Democrat on the #Judiciary Cmte. There were signs that, at 87, she was experiencing memory difficulties…. In 2022, she suffered the loss of her husband of 42 yrs, investor Richard Blum.

@Nonilex I wish Center weren't so hard to pin down.